Breathless action, lots of dragons, and chewy themes to boot.
When cyborg dragons threaten Drakopolis, dragon racer Abel must find a way to save both it and them.
As in the series opener, it’s cops vs. criminal gangs both in the sprawling, corrupt city and in 13-year-old Abel’s family, where his older brother, Silas, works for the Dragon’s Eye secret police and his big sister, Lina, is a fugitive member of the politically subversive Sky Knights kin. He himself only wants to train and race dragons—particularly after meeting Brazza, an illegal mixed-breed flyer of touchy disposition and astonishing intelligence. While the plot does indeed feature two breathtaking, high-speed aerial races among the skyscrapers and a massive climactic melee featuring hundreds of maddened dragons with cybernetic enhancements and hacked DNA, it’s more than just a pretext for set piece battles, as London also perceptively explores both the dynamics of a close family beset with conflicting loyalties and issues tied to subjugating and experimenting on wild creatures who don’t talk but can, it turns out, sing and who, in Abel’s view at least, are deserving of freedom. Lighter touches, such as 8-ton Brazza’s fondness for being read to and occasional mentions of an anarchistic kin dubbed the Wind Breakers, leaven the proceedings. The human cast, though it presents largely White, does include one nonbinary supporting character, a boy who has a dragon queen act, and glancing mention of same-sex crushes.
Breathless action, lots of dragons, and chewy themes to boot. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-71657-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short.
In the dystopian, totalitarian world of 2099, 14-year-old Tessa and her family are desperate to solve the mystery of her twin brother Theo’s disappearance.
Tessa is growing up in a time when playgrounds are historical relics, surveillance cameras are everywhere, music is outlawed, and owning books is illegal. Under the absolute rule of Zokiris, the decadeslong leader of her territory, people are heavily controlled. When Theo vanishes under mysterious circumstances and his name is erased from the Territory Statistics list, Tessa’s 135-year-old neighbor, Miriam, gives the family contraband books that become central to figuring out Theo’s whereabouts. Most books have long since been seized and stored away in Building 903; Tessa is intrigued by their presence in her home, while her mother is terrified. Lowry, the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Giver (1993), shines in her creation of uncomfortably believable dystopian societies. Tessa’s painfully limited world is fully imagined, with its own history, laws, and norms. Her relationship with her brother reads as realistic and tender and is crucial to the mystery. Miriam is the most strongly developed character: wise and independent, unafraid and hopeful. While the climb to the book’s climax is captivating, the hurried resolution is disappointing. The powerful messaging around the importance of literature and imagination certainly resonates, however. The main characters present white.
A successful call for creating and imagining, even if the story itself falls short. (Dystopian. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063515109
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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